Archived entries for Dyana Herron

Water: we think of it all the time. This is perhaps especially true of me, born a Baptist, an Aquarius, and a weeper. A Baptist, dipped into the carp-thick Conasauga river. An Aquarius, water bearer. A weeper, sloshing water from the bucket of the soul. Continue Reading …

I’m always surprised come mid-September when I pop into the drugstore or supermarket and first see the aisle in black and orange, yellow and purple, of fun-sized Halloween candy and plastic jack-o-lantern buckets. Continue Reading …

I am scraping a long waterfall of blue wax from my friends’ wall. First I try with just my fingernails, but when that doesn’t work, I use a butter knife, careful not to gouge the paint. This wax is from a candle that sat on top of their bookshelf, the bookshelf we just loaded into a truck, just like almost everything else they own. Continue Reading …

When I was six, my mother entered me in a beauty pageant. This was in the late 80s, before the JonBenét Ramsey tragedy cast a harsh light on parents who doll their daughters up like prepubescent Barbies—bouffant hair, red lips, layer upon layer of mascara. Continue Reading …

Even as I write this, residents in and around Nashville, in my home state, are suffering from recent floods. Some are temporarily displaced, some have lost their homes for good, some are mourning family members and friends. All because of rain—rain that came hard and came fast, causing the Cumberland River to crest its banks. Continue Reading …

When I was a still a student in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program, the March residency at Camp Casey on Whidbey Island was always my favorite. As any former or current student will tell you, that is a hard call.

Most of the time, I don’t feel like a brave person. This has been true since I was a child, a child plagued by strange and vivid fears. I remember lying in bed at night listening to the drone of airplanes passing by overhead—I would imagine a change in the tenor of the engine, and felt certain the plane must be diving downwards. Continue Reading…

Hardly a week goes by that I don’t speak, or hear, a line from a Wes Anderson movie. My friends and I belong to that group of twenty-something Anderson fans devoted to the look and language of his quirky films, and many a line has made its way into our collective vocabulary. Continue Reading …

The first time I experienced a true yearning for heaven, I wasn’t in church—I was at a rock concert. I mean, if you could call it that. In Atlanta, in what amounted to not much more than a glorified gymnasium, Icelandic group Sigur Ros (in English: “Victory Rose”) sawed out their trademark brand of intensely emotive, atmospheric music. Continue Reading …